List available tools in an AgentCore gateway - Amazon Bedrock AgentCore

List available tools in an AgentCore gateway

To list all available tools that an AgentCore gateway provides, make a POST request to the gateway's MCP endpoint and specify tools/list as the method in the request body:

POST /mcp HTTP/1.1 Host: ${GatewayEndpoint} Content-Type: application/json Authorization: ${Authorization header} ${RequestBody}

Replace the following values:

  • ${GatewayEndpoint} – The URL of the gateway, as provided in the response of the CreateGateway API.

  • ${Authorization header} – The authorization credentials from the identity provider when you set up inbound authorization.

  • ${RequestBody} – The JSON payload of the request body, as specified in Listing tools in the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Include tools/list as the method.

Note

For a list of optionally supported parameters for tools/list, see the params object in the request body at Tools in the Model Context Protocol documentation. At the top of the page next to the search bar, you can select the MCP version whose documentation you want to view. Make sure that the version is one supported by Amazon Bedrock AgentCore.

The response returns a list of available tools with their names, descriptions, and parameter schemas.

Code samples for listing tools

To see examples of listing available tools in the gateway, select one of the following methods:

Python requests package
import requests import json def list_tools(gateway_url, access_token): headers = { "Content-Type": "application/json", "Authorization": f"Bearer {access_token}" } payload = { "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": "list-tools-request", "method": "tools/list" } response = requests.post(gateway_url, headers=headers, json=payload) return response.json() # Example usage gateway_url = "https://${GatewayEndpoint}/mcp" # Replace with your actual gateway endpoint access_token = "${AccessToken}" # Replace with your actual access token tools = list_tools(gateway_url, access_token) print(json.dumps(tools, indent=2))
MCP Client
import asyncio from mcp import ClientSession from mcp.client.streamable_http import streamablehttp_client async def execute_mcp( url, token, headers=None ): default_headers = { "Authorization": f"Bearer {token}" } headers = {**default_headers, **(headers or {})} async with streamablehttp_client( url=url, headers=headers, ) as ( read_stream, write_stream, callA, ): async with ClientSession(read_stream, write_stream) as session: # 1. Perform initialization handshake print("Initializing MCP...") _init_response = await session.initialize() print(f"MCP Server Initialize successful! - {_init_response}") # 2. List available tools print("Listing tools...") cursor = True tools = [] while cursor: next_cursor = cursor if type(cursor) == bool: next_cursor = None list_tools_response = await session.list_tools(next_cursor) tools.extend(list_tools_response.tools) cursor = list_tools_response.nextCursor tool_names = [] if tools: for tool in tools: tool_names.append(tool.name) tool_names_string = "\n".join(tool_names) print( f"List MCP tools. # of tools - {len(tools)}" f"List of tools - \n{tool_names_string}\n" ) async def main(): url = "https://${GatewayEndpoint}/mcp" token = "your_bearer_token_here" # Optional additional headers additional_headers = { "Content-Type": "application/json", } await execute_mcp( url=url, token=token, headers=additional_headers ) # Run the async function if __name__ == "__main__": asyncio.run(main())
Strands MCP Client
from strands.tools.mcp.mcp_client import MCPClient from mcp.client.streamable_http import streamablehttp_client import os def create_streamable_http_transport(mcp_url: str, access_token: str): return streamablehttp_client(mcp_url, headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {access_token}"}) def get_full_tools_list(client): """ List tools w/ support for pagination """ more_tools = True tools = [] pagination_token = None while more_tools: tmp_tools = client.list_tools_sync(pagination_token=pagination_token) tools.extend(tmp_tools) if tmp_tools.pagination_token is None: more_tools = False else: more_tools = True pagination_token = tmp_tools.pagination_token return tools def run_agent(mcp_url: str, access_token: str): mcp_client = MCPClient(lambda: create_streamable_http_transport(mcp_url, access_token)) with mcp_client: tools = get_full_tools_list(mcp_client) print(f"Found the following tools: {[tool.tool_name for tool in tools]}") run_agent(<MCP URL>, <Access token>)
LangGraph MCP Client
import asyncio from langchain_mcp_adapters.client import MultiServerMCPClient def list_tools( url, headers ): mcp_client = MultiServerMCPClient( { "agent": { "transport": "streamable_http", "url": url, "headers": headers, } } ) tools = asyncio.run(mcp_client.get_tools()) tool_details = [] tool_names = [] for tool in tools: tool_names.append(f"{tool.name}") tool_detail = f"{tool.name} - {tool.description} \n" tool_properties = tool.args_schema.get('properties', {}) properties = [] for property_name, tool_property in tool_properties.items(): properties.append(f"{property_name} - {tool_property.get('description', None)} \n") tool_details.append(f"{tool_detail}{"\n".join(properties)}") tool_details_string = "\n".join(tool_details) tool_names_string = "\n".join(tool_names) print( f"Langchain: List MCP tools. # of tools - {len(tools)}\n", f"Langchain: List of tool names - \n{tool_names_string}\n" f"Langchain: Details of tools - \n{tool_details_string}\n" )
Note

If search is enabled on the gateway, then the search tool, x_amz_bedrock_agentcore_search will be listed first in the response.